EPCglobal US Names New President

May 20, 2004–The Uniform Code Council announced today that Dicki Lulay has resigned as president of its EPCglobal US U.S. subsidiary, effective May 31. Michael Meranda, currently EPCglobal US's vice president of strategic planning and development, will takeover as the new president of the organization.

Mike Meranda

Lulay's decision to leave marks the second high-level departure from the organization that is commercializing Electronic Product Code technology in as many months. Margaret Fitzgerald resigned as head of EPCglobal, which oversees standards development and acts as an umbrella for national chapters, in April.

Meranda says the timing of the departures is coincidental. "I wouldn’t read too much into it," he says. "Every organization experiences turnover. There's no loss of momentum or focus. We are fully supporting the projects we've talked about publicly. We have a great team. And Dicki and I worked together closely for the last six months, so the transition should be very smooth."

EPCglobal is a joint venture set up by the UCC and EAN International, the two groups that have established bar code standards worldwide (the two groups recently announced that they would merge to form a single organization named GS1). EPCglobal US is a subsidiary of the UCC and was set up, like those in other countries, to promote EPC adoption. Meranda says the next 12 months will be very busy for the U.S. branch.

"We want to focus on achieving three critical objectives during the next 12 months," he says. "There's a lot of activity in the market, so first and foremost, we want to support the implementations of our subscribers in the United States. Second, we want to engage industries that are exploring EPC or those that are trying to figure out how EPC can help them. And third, we want to support EPCglobal in establishing standards and getting the EPC Network built."

Since 2000, Meranda had worked at RosettaNet, a body set up by companies in the computer and electronics industry to establish standard business processes within the industry. RosettaNet was purchased by UCC, and Meranda joined EPCglobal in October 2003, around the time that the Auto-ID Center handed off version 1 of the EPC technology to EPCglobal. Meranda says his experience at RosettaNet will be invaluable as he takes over at EPCglobal.

"Part of the way we are hoping to support EPCglobal subscribers is based on successful developments at RosettaNet," he says. "And like RosettaNet, EPCglobal is focused on supporting real-world implementations. We're not interested in writing nice white papers that sit on the shelf."

Meranda has been working to promote EPC adoption in industries outside of retail and consumer packaged goods sectors, which are at the forefront of EPC use today. That will continue to be a major focus of EPCglobal US.

"EPCglobal US's business model is designed around working with other standards bodies, such as RosettaNet, that develop application standards," he says. "We're not saying we have a complete solution that you have to implement in its entirety to get the value of EPC. We're building small pieces and specifications that companies and industries can use for whatever business processes work for them."